Quotes About People's Character

#1. People's character is their behaviour - we're all capable of good and evil.

Bertie Carvel

#2. In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of people's character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us - usually spotty - and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive.

Leonard Mlodinow

#3. Someone's sexuality shouldn't define who they are as a person. And I hope one day the world stops focusing so much on who people have in their beds and starts basing their opinions on people's character instead.

Jaclyn Osborn

#4. People's character will be revealed in difficult situations, whether they are a loser or a winner.

Ardianto Sony

#5. One of the great things about my mother is she really valued people's character more than what they did.

Hillary Clinton

#6. Be more interested in people's character, than their contributions.

Aaron Gillespie

#7. I am an old journalist, so I always do a lot of research and dive deep into people's character, who they are, and their motivation.

Peter Landesman

#8. To know a people's character, we must see it at its homes, and look chiefly to the humbler abodes where that portion of the people dwells which makes the broad basis of the national prosperity.

Lajos Kossuth

#9. If you can write a character who is attractive but morally reprehensible, then you've got a character. It's got to feel like people I know and it doesn't just become a bag of tricks.

Jez Butterworth

#10. People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

Iris Murdoch

#11. For a documentary it's so important to find the characters and to find people who will give you access to film

Adam McKay

#12. My philosophy is always, "Let's get the spirit of the character." If people believe in it and the spirit of it, then it will work.

Julian Jarrold

#13. People that are brilliant and successful, we think they've just always been that way. That's not the case. Most of them have had some tough adversity in their life. It's prepared them. I've never felt like you could develop character without adversity.

Bobby Bowden

#14. She was spontaneous. Even in her cleverness. She never looked at people; people looked at her. It was her reward for being natural.

Anuradha Bhattacharyya

#15. What happens if you're the guy who's been on the show ten years and is highly paid but they have nothing for you to do is that they bring in other people, and you become a supporting character to those people.

Ted Shackelford

#16. We need to treat people according to who they are in Christ because in Him we acquire God's character.

Sunday Adelaja

#17. My thing was always more character-driven comedies, not sketch comedy - not that there's not room for both or one isn't enjoyable, just my personal taste, I like movies that comedy comes from out of flaws of people, things that are uncomfortable, out of tragedy.

Vince Vaughn

#18. I think it's very important for me to work on myself while I'm working on a character, and also it's important how I'm giving to and educating an audience. So I tend to go with people who are complex and substantive.

Judith Light

#19. The closer you stay to emotional authenticity and people, character authenticity, the less you can go wrong. That's how I feel now, no matter what you're doing.

David O. Russell

#20. In my view, success is earned externally by being better than other people. But character, that sort of unfakeable goodness, is earned by being better than you used to be. And it's about self-confrontation.

David Brooks

#21. In 'Tintin,' it's like a live-action role. You're living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it's a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You're responsible for a small part.

Andy Serkis

#22. I get letters from kids, teenagers and young girls who just want to be Mac. I've had quite a few people actually say that they're going to become a Marine or a JAG lawyer because of me ... the character. I think that's pretty cool!

Catherine Bell

#23. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.

Jean Fritz

#24. Top five things I miss about Laura ... Two: she's got character ... she's loyal and honest, and she doesn't even take it out on people when she's having a bad day. That's character.

Nick Hornby

#25. Certain people do need to stay in character the whole time, and that's just what they require as a person.

Michael Angarano

#26. Taking on an iconic character is difficult, sure, people associate different actors with a character that you're playing, but there's something in rehearsing and developing a new character.

Kathryn Hahn

#27. Scenes change all the time. Scenes will change while you're shooting them, and you just have to roll with it 'cause that's what makes it funny. It's not being stuck in your character and how you're gonna do something, but to react to other people and to really have a real-life conversation.

Yara Shahidi

#28. That's why I think the 'Scarpetta' series has worked so well because people like spending time with this character.

Patricia Cornwell

#29. Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

Brett Gelman

#30. I don't think it's at all weakening of the system if people with the same last name put themselves forward to the electorate, when their experiences, their character, and in my case, gender, may be different.

Hillary Clinton

#31. Most of my characters are romantic rather than sexual. I think that's an essential difference in my pictures. I think they are more accurate in portraying young people as romantic - as wanting a relationship, an understanding with a member of the opposite sex more than just physical sex.

John Hughes

#32. My objective is that I don't try to do the same thing. I try not to emulate something I've done before. And, I'm a real people watcher, so I like trying to play characters that are as diverse from each other as possible, simply because it's more fun for me, actually.

Emily Blunt

#33. I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.

Allegra Huston

#34. You are the main character in the story of your life, but other people are the main characters of their own lives. And sometimes you can find healing just by playing a supporting role in someone else's experience.

Timothy Kurek

#35. Beneath this warm flesh beats the heart of a compassionate man, one who's fought his whole life to fulfill his people's dream. Just because you feel the need to lean on someone, to accept someone else's strength for a little while doesn't make you weak.

Kylie Griffin

#36. The measure of your character is not what you do when people are looking. It's what you do when you think no one is looking.

Jason Mraz

#37. God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather, He is creating a people among whom He can live and who in their life together will reproduce God's life and character.

Gordon Fee

#38. Certain songs I feel different people should be on different tracks, you know it's emotional. I put myself into characters for certain records.

Kool Keith

#39. When you're in your early 20s, a lot of characters can be one or two dimensional. You want a role to substantiate the drama, as opposed to actually analyzing the psychology of a human being. That's what drew me to acting, particularly the contradictions in people.

Tom Hughes

#40. If you kill a character people feel sad. That's too easy.

David Hare

#41. If you steal other people's characters, it doesn't work with the context of the scripts and what is written, so I wanted to make her my own. I was petrified, in the beginning, because it's such an iconic character, especially being a young lady myself.

Tamsin Egerton

#42. The beauty of the character is that it's like camouflage. It's the best costume ever. I rarely get recognized as Pornstache when I'm out in public. Most people recognize me as the Law & Order guy, when I'm out in public.

Pablo Schreiber

#43. I've always preferred Marvel over DC. I just relate to their characters better. I mean look at Wolverine, at first he was just a bit player in an ensemble cast. Now he's the only reason people read X-Men. Just like me and Scrubs.

Zach Braff

#44. The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race.

Octavia E. Butler

#45. He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?"
-- Marlene Dietrich's character in Touch Of Evil, originally written by Whit Masterson as Badge Of Evil. One of the best closing sequences you'll see in classical Hollywood

Whit Masterson

#46. I think people are really starting to rebel against that. And I think there's going to be more and more gray areas. Hopefully that means we'll see more stories with characters that could be interchangeable with men.

Evan Rachel Wood

#47. I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.

Darius McCrary

#48. It's very rare that a character comes to mind complete in himself. He needs additional traits that I often pick from actual people. One way you can cover your tracks is to change the sex.

Louis Auchincloss

#49. I have long admired Caroline Leavitt's probing insight into people, her wit and compassion, her ability to find humor in dark situations, and conversely, her tenderness towards characters.

Dan Chaon

#50. Of course you cannot know a man completely,
his character, his principles, sense of judgment,
not till he's shown his colors, ruling the people,
making laws. Experience, there's the test.

Sophocles

#51. You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

Joel Kinnaman

#52. Being on the run wasn't fun, but it was something I had to do. I was actually working in legitimate jobs. I wasn't living on people's credit cards. I was living like a character out of a movie. It was performance art.

Kevin Mitnick

#53. Obviously, any time you're closer in terms of what your knowledge is to a character, you can add something. But an actor's job is not to play only people he can identify with.

Peter Riegert

#54. We're not trying to prove the character of God through science. That's a bad idea. What I'm trying to do is clear away the misunderstandings, the debris that prevent people from accepting that God who wants to accept them.

Phillip E. Johnson

#55. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.

Flannery O'Connor

#56. If you trust that the people making the show love the source material and the characters, and it's a different medium and there are different requirements for long-form storytelling that will hopefully carry over a number of seasons, then it's exciting.

Greg Bryk

#57. Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.
We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation.

Seth Godin

#58. We never plant trees in other people's yard and hope them to grow. We plant them in ours, water them and take care of them. We should do the same with our lives. Never lay it on others.

Saru Singhal

#59. People build up a picture of Johnny Depp as being some sort of weird pirate character. In reality he's incredibly nice ... one of the nicest people I've ever met.

Freddie Highmore

#60. Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos - thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough.

Dan Brown

#61. I've gotten a lot of compliments on the 'Criminal Minds' guy. I guess it's because the look of that character is so different from what people expect of me.

Jason Alexander

#62. The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.

Harry Lloyd

#63. What's fun is watching actors of that calibre bring them to life. It's incredible. Christian Bale spent a day with the character he plays and after my year of being with him I couldn't have generated the same view of him. They have a different way of looking at people, it's fascinating to watch.

Michael Lewis

#64. I'm trying to use the camera to get into people's heads. I use camera techniques a lot to articulate character.

Tony Scott

#65. Ordinary people, even weak people, can do extraordinary things through temporary courage generated by a situation. But the person of character does not need the situation to generate his courage. It is a part of his being and a standard approach to all life's challenges.

Michael Josephson

#66. I love to design for women, it's really open and very free. I always think of my friends. I think of both fictitious characters, real people from the past and the present. I am not a woman, but I find women so beautiful and so fascinating.

Marc Jacobs

#67. TV is a big business. In some ways, it's surpassed films, in terms of the way people invest in these shows and invest in these characters, and give up so much of their time to follow these people's stories.

Jamie Bell

#68. I think that's what makes David Ayer really interesting. He likes to make a tough-y movie, but actually he's a character director. He's fascinated by the actual people who decide to have these jobs and the way it affects their lives.

Mireille Enos

#69. I want to play a range, from victims to strong people, just as long as it's a well-rounded character. And it's not a woman who's just there for the purpose of the man.

Bel Powley

#70. If I'm playing someone who's smart, suddenly every character I've played is smart. If I'm playing a bad guy, every character is a bad guy. I suppose it's that thing where people want to see a through-line to understand you. I mean, you know, I have played pretty ordinary people too.

Benedict Cumberbatch

#71. I can never kind of fathom a character's journey beyond the moment when you go to black, any more than when people ask me what Jason Patric did with the tape recorder at the end of 'Narc,' you know what I mean? Even in 'Blood, Guts,' like, what happens down the road with these characters?

Joe Carnahan

#72. I do not want a player who is a perfect man and has a fantastic character. That's the kind of guy I want for my daughter as a man.

Jose Mourinho

#73. There are people who follow me on Twitter and tell me how much they don't like me, how much they don't want me on the show, and that they hope I die. And it's not just about the character. They tell me how they've never liked Scott Foley, and that he's a stupid, white, plain-bread looking fool.

Scott Foley

#74. Philly is a state of mind I'm always in. The city is truly a character in its own right, and it's served me well because the people I was exposed to gave me that cultural rootedness.

M. K. Asante

#75. When you become such a strong personality in music, it's hard for people to accept you as a different character.

Grace Jones

#76. There is an interesting idea: almost everybody's fascinated by the perpetrator of a crime; very few people study what happens to people for the rest of their lives, and how it affects not only that particular character but other characters around him as well.

Clint Eastwood

#77. I spend a long time casting, but once I've cast a film there's a reason why I selected those people. So I'm hands-on in selecting the cast, hands-off to see what they do with their characters, and hands-on again to offer suggestions.

Alexander Payne

#78. Sometimes I am kind of the opposite of my character. But that's the thing about acting, you get to play people who are not like you at all.

Dakota Fanning

#79. I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.

Dana Spiotta

#80. It sure is boring to be around people who are in character all the time. I always find it's closer to mental illness than acting excellence.

William H. Macy

#81. It seems like there's a lot of people who just do not understand satire. They think it's weird. There's people who just don't understand you portray something or just explore a character, it means you're condoning it, saying this is the way to live.

Mike Judge

#82. When your characters are not white hats or black hats but something in between, you do have to be very careful about your details. So, that takes a while. I'm not interested in white hats and black hats. I don't think that's how people are in real life.

Victor Levin

#83. The other, more serious problem associated with cosmetic surgery is that conventional treatments often give people a very unnatural, blank, or stretched look. Wiping all the character from a person's face is the most profound form of identity theft I can imagine.

Marie-Veronique Nadeau

#84. Quite openly, voters selected on the basis of perceived character and past behaviour rather than the views a candidate expressed. Where an individual's nature was not obvious, the Roman people tended to be drawn to a famous name, for there was a sense that virtue and ability were inherited.

Adrian Goldsworthy

#85. It's been amazing to play a character that's known by so many people, especially because everyone knows at least something about Peter Pan.

Levi Miller

#86. It's always great to play a character that goes against the grain. Finn defies what people think when they think of stormtroopers.

John Boyega

#87. It's quite a trick to use three instruments to tell the story of two people, but Vores carried it off; three, for once, is not a crowd. Each member of the trio gets important solos, but there is also a real ensemble character.

Richard Dyer

#88. ...[S]ome of the opinions which people entertain should be respected, and others should not.

Socrates

#89. I always want to know what's wrong with you, why you ain't smiling. That's just my character; I just love people and want to see people having a good time.

Wyclef Jean

#90. Every woman is a character - but people need to see I'm a regular human. It's like you wear a pink wig and you're no longer human all of sudden.

Nicki Minaj

#91. The more I get to do this character, the more I realize that she's not just annoying. It's that her strength is not interacting with people socially. She just doesn't have time because she has so much going on in her brain.

Mary Lynn Rajskub

#92. Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by,and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

J.C. Watts Jr.

#93. Well, if you look at the whole story, I mean there's only Jews and Romans in the story. I mean I just wanted to flesh that character out and make that a drama about the people around Christ when he was going through this passion.

Mel Gibson

#94. Audiences make their minds up about people they see on screen, just like they do in real life. That's what fascinates me in film. You see a character and have to think: is this person different to what I assumed he was when I first saw him?

Steven Rodney McQueen

#95. I'm just enjoying playing a character of myself. People's mouths drop when I dance, but my friends are like, "You dance like that in the kitchen!"

Miley Cyrus

#96. It's hard to look at anything with an objective eye. I think people bring themselves into the equation when they watch a movie. They bring their own prejudices, their own biases, their own feelings toward the subject matter, the characters.

James Ponsoldt

#97. It's really interesting that, in 'The Avengers,' the character that people relate to is The Hulk, and I think the reason why they relate to The Hulk is because he's fragile and human and faulty.

Chris Pine

#98. All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to.

Carol S. Dweck

#99. I'm an actor and I've created a lasting and memorable character named Frasier, who is not me, but who most people think is. So when I have a chance to play something that's different, I embrace it because it's fun; also in this case, he's a memorable character.

Kelsey Grammer

#100. It's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.

Will Schwalbe